Wicked Gentlemen (15 page)

Again Brandson nodded, as if the thought had been his own. The fact that a Prodigal had been designated as the murderer even before the investigation began didn't seem to bother Brandson. Only Abbot Greeley's orders seemed to penetrate his thoughts.

Harper had once wondered how Brandson managed to rise to the rank of captain. He supposed that he was now witnessing the qualities that Abbot Greeley so valued in Brandson.

"With your permission, sir, I think I had better get back to my vacation." Harper inclined his head slightly to the abbot out of habit.

"A very good idea, Captain Harper. I don't want to catch a glimpse of you until you're due back." Abbot Greeley smiled as if he were joking. Harper wondered if the abbot actually thought he was fooling him.

"We can both hope," Harper replied, and then left the house.

Chapter Two

Needle

The old woman hung against Harper like a mass of soaked laundry. She was limp in his arms, her body and limbs buried in the filthy, dripping fabric of her dress. Her wrinkled face was nearly as colorless as her lace cap and white hair. Only the short wisps of her breath brushing against his collar assured Harper that she was even alive.

For a brief moment Harper thought that she had died when he first returned to her, but he found a pulse still weakly throbbing through the pale veins of her wrist. She hadn't awakened when he shook her, only letting out a weak groan. Her skin felt icy and tremors shuddered through her body. She needed to be taken to a physician. He quickly wrapped her in his coat.

She shivered, and Harper pulled her closer to the heat of his own body. Her lace cap hung in a tangle with her hair. One of the little hairpins jabbed into the side of Harper's neck as he walked. He shifted the old woman's unconscious body against his shoulder, and her cap fell entirely free.

Harper knew that he should stop and retrieve the cap. It might take only one scrap of lace to serve as a trail. But time was already against him. He didn't dare stop and fish through the mud while this woman died. He kept walking and hoped that the mud and darkness would hide whatever trail lay behind him. His best chance lay in putting as much distance between himself and the Chapel streets as quickly as possible.

It wouldn't take Reynolds and Miller long to discover that the woman hadn't been left at the Convent of the Pierced Heart. The moment they realized that, they would be hunting. That knowledge gave Harper a rush of strength, and he quickened his step.

Reynolds and Miller worked fast and took a deep pleasure in their searches. As a team, they hunted more like hounds than men. Harper had seen them chase down a murderer on no more of a trail than the print of a boot heel and a whiff of cologne. They hadn't been easy on the man either. They had brought him in with a broken leg and a gash across his hand so deep that it had required sixty stitches. Harper had always enjoyed having them assigned to one of his investigations.

Tonight he wished the two of them had found other occupations.

Harper reached the Brighton and Chapel Street carriage house just as city bells began to toll out the change of the hour. The south carriage would normally have been gone already, but the bad weather had slowed the drive. It arrived just after him. He had to wait with the old woman cradled in his arms for ten minutes while the horses were changed and the driver took a piss in the street.

Inside the shelter of the carriage, Harper allowed himself to relax a little. The old woman no longer shook against him. She lay still, sleeping. Only one other passenger climbed into the carriage after Harper. The young man was wearing a muddy school robe in the colors of St. Christopher's College. He reeked of too much sweet wine. He collapsed into the seat across from Harper, then sat bolt upright.

"Good God, are you here to arrest me?"

"No." Harper stole a glance out the window to see if Miller or Reynolds had gotten this far yet. Two blocks up, beneath one of the few remaining lamps, he thought he caught the outline of an Inquisitor's long coat. The figure was there only a moment and then gone into the darkness.

"I was only having a few sips of sherry to keep off the cold," the young student slurred at Harper. "The carriage was late. Please don't bring me up for Penance."

"Quiet," Harper told him flatly.

The young man pressed his lips together absurdly and squashed himself back into his seat.

 
Harper kept watching out the small window. Silently he counted the passing seconds to himself. When he had been a boy, he had gotten in the habit of keeping his nerves calm with this steady silent count. As Harper reached the count of eight, he saw Reynolds.

Reynolds was a surprisingly small man with misleadingly youthful features. At the moment, as he stepped swiftly through the shaft of light from a window across the street, he was beaming like a schoolboy.

Harper had counted to ten when Miller appeared. He could have been Reynolds' twin if it hadn't been for his black mustache and slightly darker hair. Miller tossed something limp and partly white to Reynolds. It was the lace cap. The pulse of Harper's blood began to quicken.

Twelve, Harper counted. Reynolds gestured ahead. Miller nodded.

Thirteen. They began to run toward the carriage house.

Fourteen. Harper calmly latched the lock on the nearest door and then reached past the drunken student and locked the opposite door.

Fifteen. Miller was close enough that even through the rain, Harper could see the glint of his little round spectacles beneath his black cap. Reynolds was bounding ahead through the mud as if it were scarcely there.

Sixteen.

Harper was suddenly rocked back into the thin padding of his seat as the carriage pulled out into the street. He kept watching as the carriage rushed farther and farther away from the two Inquisitors. It was only when he had come to a full count of sixty that Harper leaned back against the worn seat of the carriage and relaxed enough to pay any attention to the student across from him. The young man swayed back and forth as he clumsily tried to shove a half-empty bottle of wine under his seat cushion.

Some men certainly hid their deceptions better than others, Harper decided, but he said nothing of it.

At St. Christopher's Park, he lifted the old woman back into his arms and carefully got out of the carriage. Here the houses were not as sprawling as those of Chapel Street, but they stood against the black, storming sky with a conservative elegance. Harper walked quickly, ignoring the tired ache in his back and legs. Four blocks up the line of steepled roofs and miniature rose hedges, Harper reached his destination.

The house had been recently rebuilt, and Harper was no longer familiar with it. There had been six steps to the front door before. Now there were seven, and Harper almost tripped on the last one. It worried him that the woman didn't wake at all when he stumbled. He pulled the bell a little more violently than was necessary and waited.

It was late enough that most of the house staff would have been in bed or gone for the day. Harper jerked the bell chain again. Only a moment later, the door opened.

Edward took a quick look at Harper, then the old woman in his arms, and let them in.

"What happened?" Edward asked as he led Harper past the waiting room and into the consulting room.

"Exposure, I think. She's been out in the cold most of the night."

"Lay her on the table." Edward pushed his blonde hair from his face. One of his cheeks was much redder than the other. Harper guessed that he had fallen asleep at his desk again.

As Harper lay the woman down on the raised nursing table, Edward reached past him and took her pulse. Edward frowned slightly and placed his hand against her pale cold cheek. Gently, Edward brushed Harper aside and stripped the wet black coat off the woman. He tossed it to the floor.

"She collapsed on the street." Harper stepped back out of Edward's way.

There was a chair, but he felt too agitated to sit. He hung behind Edward waiting for something to do. Edward pulled the old woman's eyes open, then let the lids drop back closed. Then, carefully, Edward ran his fingers along the woman's neck and over her head.

Harper wanted to pace, but the room was too small, and he knew he'd just get in Edward's way. He wasn't good at waiting while another man took care of things. He had to keep himself from restlessly picking up the surgical instruments in the room and toying with them.

"Will she be all right?" Harper asked.

"I think so...It doesn't look like she hurt her head when she fell. Her neck feels fine as well. These clothes have to go." With a practiced ease, Edward grabbed a pair of surgical scissors and sliced off the filthy remains of the woman's clothes. He studied her withered white body for a moment.

"Her knee looks bad. It'll need stitches." Edward moved quickly past Harper, gathering the supplies he would need. "There aren't any swellings from broken bones that I can see. Aside from her knee and the cold, she seems just fine." He paused a moment to catch Harper's eye. "By the way, it's good to see you at last."

Harper nodded and tried not to look awkward. In the last two months he had hardly seen Edward at all. He knew he should have been there to comfort Edward after Joan's funeral. But pretending to mourn while Edward truly suffered made Harper feel sick with his own deception.

It had been easier to bury himself in work and avoid all thoughts of the matter.

"I've been busy...I'm sorry." Harper offered the excuse flatly.

"I understand. I've been trying to keep myself busy too." Edward filled a basin and rinsed his hands. "Will you be going out to the Foster Estate again this year?"

"I was on my way when I came across this woman."

Edward nodded.

"Do you think you might have a few days free after that?" he asked.

"I wasn't thinking of staying there the entire month," Harper said. "Just a week or so. After that I'll be free. Why don't we plan on getting together next week?"

"I'd really like that." Edward smiled brightly for a moment, then his attention returned to the old woman.

"Older ladies shouldn't be hauled around through storms, you know? You should have sent for me. It would have been just as fast for me to come to you as it was for you to get her here to me."

"I'll remember that next time," Harper replied.

"No, you won't." Edward smiled. "You couldn't stand to just wait around for me to get to you."

As he spoke, Edward sponged the mud and water off her and then covered her with a thick cotton blanket. He left only her wounded, right leg exposed.

Harper watched as Edward laid out the tools he would need: the long curving needles, silk thread, gauze, a hypodermic needle and syringe. Harper stared at the syringe for a moment as a feeling of dread welled up through him.

"Belimai," Harper whispered, and Edward glanced up to him.

"What?" Edward asked.

"Edward, I have to go." Harper started for the door.

"What about this woman?" Edward demanded.

"I'll be back for her. Just don't let anyone know she's here with you, all right? Especially not anyone from the Inquisition." Harper knew he was asking more of Edward than he had a right to, but he had no other choice. "I have to go. They may kill him if I don't get to him first."

"Wait! Will, who are you talking about?"

"I'll explain later."

Harper bolted out, leaving his coat behind. All he could think of was that time was not with him tonight. No matter how fast he ran, no matter how brutally he forced strength into his exhausted body, the moments between life and death slipped past him.

Chapter Three

Black Nails

The rain worsened, and the packed dirt of the streets softened into a citywide bog. Harper ran hard, keeping to the raised walkways. In the street beside him, cart horses struggled to pull themselves and their burdens through the thick mud. Harper crossed the road at Butcher Street. He sank almost to his knees. The mud clung to Harper's legs and pulled at him as he fought his way forward.

Frigid rain slapped down against him. His wet clothes clung to his body, spreading the chill of wind and rain across his skin. Mud oozed through the crack in his boot heel. If he had thought about it, Harper might have noticed that he could hardly feel his fingers or toes anymore.

But he didn't think about it. Just as he didn't think of what the Inquisition men could have done if they had already found Belimai. Vivid, bleeding images flickered through Harper's mind, but he did not acknowledge them.

He counted silently to mute the fear surging through him. It was easier to count the moments that passed than to think of what could occur during them. After sixty he began again at one, turning time back on itself in a sixty second circle. As he had once named devils so that they could have no power over him, he now named the seconds. Another man might have prayed, but Harper had abandoned prayer long ago.

Harper's darkest fears, those that hunted him even in his dreams, were bred from this constant, hopeless race. In his nightmares, he always arrived too late. No matter how hard he ran, moments slipped past him. He reached his mother only an instant after her death. He burst into his stepfather's study to find his pipe still burning but the man gone, never to return. He never even came close to reaching his sister before her tears turned to streams of furious blood.